Mayor, Mayo and Wet Wipes

Today we found out that the Mayor of our city has signed our paperwork approving our adoption and has given authority back to the inspector (who had this position before the change) to do the "conclusion" of our adoption. This is the step before our case goes to the court. The inspector wants to do the "conclusion" on Wednesday and then we will go and get a court date. YAY!!! The Lord is SO good!!! This is very good and a huge step considering all of the changes going on. Thank you so much for all of your prayers!! 

We are loving living in Ukraine!! The food is amazing, the people are very sweet and everyone dresses really nice. Seriously, all of the women here wear three to four inch heals no matter where they go. Whether it is a short walk down the street or a long stroll through the thick mud road. I love it! I am also in love with all of the women's jackets! They are so different and so beautiful. I love the ones with fur on the cuffs and on the hood of the jacket. I feel so frumpy compared to all of the locals here for sure. I am walking around in my travel flats (which are not cute), my Columbia jacket and non-skinny jeans (I figured it would be too cold for those). I was not planning to look cute. Oh well. :) I am also loving the food here. Being from the south, I have a deep love for fried food and pretty much everything here is fried. Fried chicken, fried pork, fried potato pancakes (my favorite dish so far), french fries, fried crepes, fried homemade potatoes (which are cut up and mixed with a bunch of ingredients) and the list goes on.  So life is good. I also have a liking for mayo. I mean I like it on my hot dog, hamburger or whatever else you put it on. I thought I liked it more than most people but let me tell you what, Ukrainians (where we are) love the stuff!! We have had it on most dishes we've been served such as fried chicken/pork, pizza, crepes, fries, and salads (think of slaw made with 80% mayo). So I pretty much get my fill of mayo each day.

Today was such a fun day with our sweet little guy. For our morning visit we spent most of our time outside. It was warmer today and the ground was dry for the most part. We had a lot of fun. We brought the ball and he kicked it around everywhere, we slid down slides, we got on swings together, walked/ran around the yard and watched some chickens. In the back of the orphanage are some yards filled with chickens. They were so much fun to watch. He loved when the rooster would crow and when the hens would peck at the ground. It was like a free petting zoo without the petting part. :)

In between our visits to the orphanage we ventured out to the main square in town to buy paper, a notebook and internet minutes. OLG loves to color and loves for papa to draw “machinos” or cars so we thought blank paper and a notebook would be perfect for him. Due to our lack of language skills we do a lot of pointing and laughing. I am sure we look ridiculous but oh well we were not sure if we needed to learn Russian or Ukrainian. I was reading in another blog before I came that they used Google Translate to help translate some things. I thought that was a great idea but we didn't get that turned on before we left. Whoops. I think it is fun to learn by trial and error so I am fine with not having it.

Our afternoon visit was pretty funny. We were prepared with new and exciting things to do. We had new paper and a fancy new notebook with a car on the front of it. We thought that would be perfect and he would love the car on the front and spend a lot of time drawing in his brand spanking new notebook. Well we always start our time off with a snack and juice. This time we had remembered to bring wet wipes to wash his sticky hands off with. So after snack we got out his new notebook with the car on the front, he looked at it for a few seconds, thought it is sort of cool and then grabbed the wet wipe to clean the room. He thought the wet wipe was the best thing in the whole world!! He played with three different wet wipes for over an hour and a half! A Wet Wipe of all things! He washed the glass exit door on the front and on the back (papa picked him up to get the top parts of the door), the walls, the sink and whatever else he thought needed to be clean. I felt bad at first like he was trying to impress us with his cleaning skills, then I realized he was really having fun. Whenever it would get dry, he would go to the sink in the bathroom, re-wet it and pick up where he left off. Sweet! Not only does he like to organize, he likes to clean. Yes!! He is so like me! ; ) He had so much fun cleaning. I am pretty sure he had more fun with that Wet Wipe than everything else we have brought for him to play with. Who knew? I have pictures and can't wait to show you our little cleaner man!

I am loving reading your replies!! They are great encouragement!! Thank you so much for praying for us!!